Many businesses routinely offer customer support services that can be accessed through public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) and Internet protocol (IP) enabled networks. In most cases, the customer or end-user can simply dial the phone number of the company's service line to talk to a service agent or operator. The traditional call center for handling service calls was based on a private branch exchange (PBX) that included core automatic call distributor (ACD) functions for connecting a caller to one of a plurality of agents. Most modern ACDs utilize an interactive voice response (IVR) system that provides information and channels calls to service agents in response to the spoken words or touch tone signaling of a telephone caller.
By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,877 teaches a system in which a caller utilizes a personal computer (PC) for establishing an Internet connection to an ACD and for permitting a caller to select a particular agent. A system for providing information about a telephone caller to a telephone agent, wherein caller-specific data of the caller is used to generate a web page that displays the identified information to the agent is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,871,212. U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,715 discloses a system for operatively integrating an ACD and an IVR unit in which an interaction input from a caller is stored and then transmitted to an appropriate agent workstation. A method and apparatus for analyzing the performance of an IVR system with respect to routing of calls or contacts received in accordance with a contact flow model is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,879,685.
Some ACD applications are deployed in a branch model where there is no centralized call center with full-time agents to answer incoming calls. In this model, the employees working at a branch on other tasks double as call center agents. For instance, a customer service agent at a retail store may be responsible for handling service requests from both incoming calls from the ACD application as well as persons present (e.g., standing in queue) at a customer service counter. In some cases, a ticket dispenser may be used to insure that persons requesting service at the counter are handled in the order they arrived. Individuals requesting service simply pull a ticket out of the dispenser, with the ticket a having a printed number that indicates the relative position of the person in the human queue.
Often times, the agents attempt to service the incoming phone calls and the people standing in line at the counter on an alternating basis (e.g., alternating equally between the callers and the persons present at the counter). The ACD application, however, is unaware of the human queue present at the service counter. That means that the ACD may continue to send calls to the agents behind the counter. The problem that arises is that an agent's normal reaction is to answer their phone soon after it starts ringing, thereby ignoring the people standing in line who may have been waiting for a very long time. As a result, in the branch model normal system operations usually end up granting priority to customers in the call queue over those customers who are physically present (i.e., in the human queue) at the service counter. This can cause real frustration among the persons standing in queue since their perception is that their service needs are either being ignored or treated with a lower priority status.
What is needed, therefore, is a mechanism for simultaneously managing both human and caller queues such that people physically waiting in queue at a service counter are treated on a par with telephone callers to the ACD application.
By way of further background, U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,877 discloses an electronic apparatus which is capable of dispensing tickets. A system and method of dispensing lottery game tickets to a purchaser is taught in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0059463. U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0089053 teaches a system and method for managing and optimizing multiple virtual end-user service queues.